Hanratty said COs had no choice but to shoot the bears, noting if the bears had been relocated to their natural environment there would be a very good chance of them making a return.

Since June of this year, 97 black bears have been euthanized by the BC Wildlife service across the province mostly due to public safety concerns.

“The problem with bears having access to unnatural food sources is that it can lead them to become food-conditioned,” said Wildlife BC Okanagan coordinator Meg Bjordal.

“Once they become food-conditioned they can very quickly become human habituated whereby they actually begin to associate people with food and that’s when they start to tolerate people in closer proximity than what is safe for both the people and the bears.”